Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, your old pal, and for
Speaker 1: this week's s Y s K Selects, I've chosen one
Speaker 1: of those overlook gems from way back in July of
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, eight years ago. Can you believe that?
Speaker 1: It's how white collar crime works? So sit back, relax
Speaker 1: and learn about how the other half commits crime. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant uh stipping
Speaker 1: on his laquais uh mineral water. And um, this isn't
Speaker 1: even a sponsored by location and done this like two
Speaker 1: or three times? Yeah, I agree, call us uh. And
Speaker 1: since you put the two of us a couple of
Speaker 1: microphones in an ice cold can of refreshing laqua mineral
Speaker 1: water together, you have something called Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: It's a pod cast. It's a podcast. I'm looking to
Speaker 1: see who makes this actually. Oh no, I thought I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, like Coca Cola and smaller. No, it's
Speaker 1: a Sundance beverage company. Oh yeah, they're huge for Minnesota.
Speaker 1: I think that's perfect. That is a perfect sponsor for stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know a little guy that's producing a great product. Agreed,
Speaker 1: lax uh so chuck, Yes, I've got an intro today. Awesome, misses,
Speaker 1: stop criticizing me. I mean, um so. Very recently, a
Speaker 1: trio of Brits economists British economists dry, They're like walking saltines.
Speaker 1: They're very exciting. Um. But anyway, these guys did something
Speaker 1: pretty cool. They studied bank robberies and their study was
Speaker 1: published in a journal called Significance. It's actually kind of
Speaker 1: a cool journal. It takes statistics and applies it to
Speaker 1: real world stuff, so it's an interesting statistics journal. If
Speaker 1: there is such a thing, um, and if there is,
Speaker 1: this is it. And what these guys found was that
Speaker 1: bank robbery is actually a really terrible way to make
Speaker 1: a living. Yes, I would agree with that morally, Economically
Speaker 1: it's a terrible way to make a living too, the right. Yes,
Speaker 1: they looked at they looked at a lot of variables,
Speaker 1: like the number of people involved, and they found that
Speaker 1: the bigger the gang, the more um, the bigger the hall.
Speaker 1: I guess. But it also meant that's one extra mouth
Speaker 1: to divide up amongst unless you're like one of those
Speaker 1: bank robbers that just kills everybody afterward. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: want to get in bed with one of those guys
Speaker 1: like Ben Affleck or like in Heat when there are
Speaker 1: a lot of killing afterward and heat. Yeah, and in
Speaker 1: the town ben Affleck's a recent heist movie. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of killing going on. I was gonna let that
Speaker 1: one walk by, but you brought it up twice. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. Um. Oh really uh okay, So anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of variables involved. But what they found
Speaker 1: is no matter what, in the u K. You can
Speaker 1: make off with about thirty one graham. That's not bad,
Speaker 1: per yes, and on average that's what that's what the
Speaker 1: take was. So in the UK it's not so bad. Um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, thirty one grand what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do with that? Yeah, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: want to live the highlight, you gotta rob like four
Speaker 1: or five banks a year, easy, right or right? Okay
Speaker 1: or um. If you're in the US, you have to
Speaker 1: rob a lot more than that. So the UK suffers
Speaker 1: about a hundred and six bank robbers a year. In
Speaker 1: the US there's twelve thousand, and of those twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: the average take is like four grand. They only have
Speaker 1: how many a year England and six that's amazing. They
Speaker 1: have really stiff, stiff gun laws and I think that
Speaker 1: probably determ bank robbery because you kind of have a
Speaker 1: gun or a note in your pocket and that says something. Well,
Speaker 1: these guys figured out that the presence of a firearm
Speaker 1: increased your takea Um. But anyway, so forty bucks that's
Speaker 1: not much at all now, and about a third of
Speaker 1: bank robberies, I guess in both countries yield nothing zero zero,
Speaker 1: So it's a lot of hard work, a lot of risk,
Speaker 1: for very little gain. The real money is in white
Speaker 1: collar crime. Oh yes, you want to make some cash quick,
Speaker 1: maybe one good heist. It's gonna set you up for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. And even if you're caught.
Speaker 1: Even if you're caught, the chances are you will have
Speaker 1: a mild, if any, penalty leviating against you. White collars
Speaker 1: the way to go. Yeah, we're talking guys who um
Speaker 1: tell people that they are financial investors and get friends
Speaker 1: and family and uh parents of the little league that
Speaker 1: they coach to give them nine grand. Um. There's other
Speaker 1: guys who just have little penny stock companies that pump
Speaker 1: up their um stock prospects called stock touting, and UM
Speaker 1: dump all of their shares UM. That's investor fraud. They
Speaker 1: make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. It's
Speaker 1: where the real money is. And historically speaking, it has
Speaker 1: really low risk. Yeah, even if you're caught. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're endorsing white collar crime, we're not endorsing it.
Speaker 1: I was being facetious. Okay, I thought you met up
Speaker 1: with white collar crime in no. No. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, it's going down. The times are definitely changing.
Speaker 1: There's a big struggle going on right now is to
Speaker 1: figuring out the just the right amount of punishment with
Speaker 1: white color crime because there's a lot of factors involved.
Speaker 1: It's a lot different from blue collar crime e g.
Speaker 1: Stealing a car, robbing a bank. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: differences that differentiated. Let's separate the two, um. And one
Speaker 1: of those now is the the sentencing forum is probably stiffer,
Speaker 1: which is a total reversal from how it used to
Speaker 1: be before. And they've also closed a lot of the
Speaker 1: club beds down that got so much press. Yes, well
Speaker 1: they've they've changed them. They're still there. They just are
Speaker 1: changed a lot of more shut down like period, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just to ship them to real federal penitentiary penitentiaries, penitentiaries
Speaker 1: and tree. Uh. That reminded me of a word that
Speaker 1: will definitely be hearing at some point in this podcast.
Speaker 1: It's a psi oh, yeah, because that's definitely white collar.
Speaker 1: Part of the problem with white collar crime, Josh, as
Speaker 1: you know from reading this, is that, um it's hard
Speaker 1: to come up with an exact definition of what constitutes it.
Speaker 1: So that's why they have a hard time getting great
Speaker 1: statistics on punishment and finds levied and how many of
Speaker 1: they're catching. But I'm gonna go with non violent crime
Speaker 1: that typically involves and you have to say things like
Speaker 1: typically because it's kind of all over the map, typically
Speaker 1: involves um deceit and fraud given by perpetrator because of
Speaker 1: their occupation. Yeah, And for that reason, a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's called occupational UM crime. Yeah. Uh. And if
Speaker 1: you look at it through that view, which is a
Speaker 1: very broad view of white collar crime, it's not just
Speaker 1: the exacts in the three thousand dollar suits who are
Speaker 1: perpetrated eating this. It's the guy who's stealing pencils from work, yeah,
Speaker 1: or non violent to see. Especially somebody asked him if
Speaker 1: he did it, and he says no, And it's because
Speaker 1: you are you're you're granted this opportunity through your occupation. Actually,
Speaker 1: I would call that petty theft. It's but I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like in a very very broad definition of white collar crime,
Speaker 1: that that definitely counts. But for the most part, when
Speaker 1: you think of white collar you think about the CEO,
Speaker 1: as you think about investor fraud, embezzlement, that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff exactly. Uh, feds have been after in the United States, uh,
Speaker 1: in earnest since nineteen seventy four as far as a
Speaker 1: a dedicated division the FBI. Yeah, and that's because the
Speaker 1: NIX and I read and then uh, despite that about
Speaker 1: three hundred billion dollars a year. And that's a pretty
Speaker 1: rough estimate, that's two estimate. Yeah. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: a few ways you can commit white color crime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the definition you gave was like beautiful, it's pretty good. Um.
Speaker 1: And there are some that just like I said, investment
Speaker 1: frau or embezzlement, they're just prototypical. Insider trading is one
Speaker 1: that's a big one, which falls under securities fraud. Right, Uh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a type of securities fraud. So basically
Speaker 1: insider trading. We've I swear we've done something on this,
Speaker 1: I don't think, so it must have been in our
Speaker 1: Fenian Freddie presentation. Then maybe we studied a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, and I thought we'd done a podcast
Speaker 1: and I guess not. But insider trading is essentially like, um,
Speaker 1: let's say that you and I find out that Discovery
Speaker 1: had an awesome quarter, and so we go and buy
Speaker 1: a bunch of Discovery stock for nothing, and then it
Speaker 1: just shoots through the roof after the stock price comes up.
Speaker 1: That's inside of trading. Sure, that's using private knowledge about
Speaker 1: a publicly traded company for your own game. That's a
Speaker 1: no note. We go to other people that would count
Speaker 1: as well, and then like s Marcus Stewart, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: they took part and then they would be uh insider
Speaker 1: traders as well, exactly. And it works the opposite way
Speaker 1: as well, Like if you find out that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of terrible information, terrible information is going to make
Speaker 1: your stock drop that you sell before that information becomes public,
Speaker 1: you're in trouble, big trouble. Securities fraud, which UM in
Speaker 1: started training is kind of like that, UM, but it
Speaker 1: is also manipulating cooking the books. You've heard that term
Speaker 1: of your own company. Two maybe undervalue UM a stock
Speaker 1: before it goes public or I mean there's all different variations,
Speaker 1: but it basically involves manipulating numbers in a dishonest way, right,
Speaker 1: that pumping up scheme where it's stocked touting. There's that's
Speaker 1: all securities fraud UM. And then there's any trust violations
Speaker 1: for another good one, there's this has been kind of
Speaker 1: big lately. So UM. Google is supposedly hogging the YouTube metadata,
Speaker 1: which is preventing Microsoft from making a decent app for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah and UM and Google's like, well, it's proprietary or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, you gotta kind of have
Speaker 1: to share that. That's they're alleging in an antitrust violation.
Speaker 1: Companies kind of police one another with that. And then
Speaker 1: also price fixing is a big one, which is like
Speaker 1: the opposite of companies policing one another. It's collusion between
Speaker 1: companies and like Apple and book publishers, UM fixing the
Speaker 1: prices of e books allegedly has been going on. Yeah, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: It's going on all over the place that it's it's
Speaker 1: a dirty, dirty, dirty world bribery one of the oldest
Speaker 1: tricks in the book. Um, obviously that's involves some sort
Speaker 1: of a payoff or a kickback in exchange for uh
Speaker 1: whatever information. Um, I get the bid, my company gets
Speaker 1: your bid for this government job, and I get a
Speaker 1: little kickback or I give you a little kickback rather um,
Speaker 1: any kind of maybe favorable decision that can influence your company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: little little grease in the palm going on. Here's three
Speaker 1: high quality frozen steaks. Please consider it, and you say
Speaker 1: consider granted. And within each of these steaks is a
Speaker 1: one million dollar bill. It's not even eating. That doesn't
Speaker 1: even exist. What frozen steaks with money in them? A
Speaker 1: million dollar bill? Okay, we know about frozen deutsch marks.
Speaker 1: Somebody sent us a dollar. By the way, I want
Speaker 1: the dollar. We'll we'll give you fifty cents, all right,
Speaker 1: I guess it's thirty three and a third we gotta
Speaker 1: give Jerry or cut. Don't go there. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: it later. Embezzlement Office Space. Everyone's seen the movie Office Space.
Speaker 1: A little program they had to like shave a sin
Speaker 1: or something off of transaction that's embezzlement. They were given
Speaker 1: the opportunity through trust with books, with accounting, they basically
Speaker 1: add access to the money and skim them off the top.
Speaker 1: A wrong guys, money laundering, which we have done a podcast.
Speaker 1: One schemes, yeah, on tax evasion. UM. So basically all
Speaker 1: of the those are all the stars. There's also other
Speaker 1: ones like UM snage, industrial espionage, corporate spelling, secrets its
Speaker 1: white collar. UM. Remember the lady who tried to sell
Speaker 1: Pepsi's secrets coke? Yeah, that was pretty hackney, no Coke's
Speaker 1: secret of pepsi because she's like, wait right here, she
Speaker 1: wasn't anyone called the cops. She didn't do a real
Speaker 1: good job. That's she was surprised. UM. Environmental law violations
Speaker 1: like dumping toxic waste, Yeah, covering that up like Aaron
Speaker 1: Brockovich style. UM. One of the things they point out
Speaker 1: in here, which is when it comes to things like
Speaker 1: your a little office space scheme that you just touted, UM,
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's difficult to imagine victims, Like
Speaker 1: in the office space, they think no one's gonna min
Speaker 1: miss a Penny is a huge company, So you commit
Speaker 1: these crimes without realizing that someone has hurt somewhere down
Speaker 1: the line. If you dump your stock, your company stock
Speaker 1: that you know is about to tank. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's understandable, but if you've like worked your whole
Speaker 1: career in sting in this company with your four O
Speaker 1: one k you know it's about to tank, You're like, man,
Speaker 1: I need to sell this or else I'm done for.
Speaker 1: My family's done for. You don't think about the people
Speaker 1: buying the stock. They're the victims. No, it's absolutely true,
Speaker 1: And I mean like you are being pawned. You're pawning
Speaker 1: your problem off on somebody else. But I think you
Speaker 1: paint a really really excellent scenario. Like you can in
Speaker 1: some cases feel bad for the white collar criminal um,
Speaker 1: especially if it's just some average Joe who's worried about
Speaker 1: is four oh one k um or in the case
Speaker 1: of en Ron, you don't feel bad for the upper dudes.
Speaker 1: You feel bad for everyone in that company that got defrauded, right,
Speaker 1: But they were strictly victims. They didn't didn't turn around
Speaker 1: and like try to dump the stocks. But that that's
Speaker 1: a very visible case of like screwing over your own employees.
Speaker 1: But you make a good point like even if the
Speaker 1: even if the criminal is sympathetic, there still is a victim.
Speaker 1: Even if it's just some amorphous trader, they will never meet,
Speaker 1: even if the victim is some like hedge fund manager. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really tough. There's like a really weird spectrum here.
Speaker 1: There's like I don't know if it's a bell curve
Speaker 1: or like, uh, the UV spectrum. Who knows. But there's
Speaker 1: sympathies like placed in different spots, sympathies and anti antipathies
Speaker 1: placed along this this depending on who did what and
Speaker 1: what they gained from it and what their motives were agreed,
Speaker 1: because you gotta also have credit card fraud and computer
Speaker 1: and mail fraud and counterfeiting and things like that, like
Speaker 1: you know the Nigerian email scams. That's white collar, but
Speaker 1: and they're in the same boat as like ken Ley
Speaker 1: and Jeff Skillings and Ron exactly same scummy crooks. Or
Speaker 1: let's say you commit a little credit card fraud and
Speaker 1: you or bankruptcy fraud and you're just like, does it
Speaker 1: be easy way to get out of my debts? Or
Speaker 1: I just say someone stole my credit card. It's very
Speaker 1: easy there to not envision a a victim because it's
Speaker 1: it's cha Manhattan Bank, and like they're gonna notice. But
Speaker 1: what happens is they raise the rates on you and me,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, everyone across the board is
Speaker 1: paying more money for stuff. Yes, that is that is true.
Speaker 1: That is very true, and that is I think everybody's probably.
Speaker 1: I think a good companion piece that occurred to me
Speaker 1: is to go listen to our wide corporations of the
Speaker 1: same rights as you. One of the fundamental flaws of
Speaker 1: UM corporate policy is that you served your shareholders first, right,
Speaker 1: like you need to adhere to the law, but really, ultimately,
Speaker 1: like anything you can do to serve your shareholders is
Speaker 1: your mandate as a as a corporate governor. UM. That
Speaker 1: includes keeping the profit margin as high as possible, which
Speaker 1: you're not gonna go to your your shareholders and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're making enough money. We took kind of a hit,
Speaker 1: but we're still making a ton of profit, so we'll
Speaker 1: just take a little hit this year. No, it's where
Speaker 1: we took a hit, so we're gonna fire people. However,
Speaker 1: you reconcile that, I mean, that's your own personal beliefs,
Speaker 1: Like what what you feel about that but that is
Speaker 1: reality as far as business goes, Right, there's fraud, there's
Speaker 1: adjustments to the fraud. There absorbing the fraud, and it's
Speaker 1: the corporation trying to get as lean as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna take the hit for that. They're not
Speaker 1: gonna say, oh, well, a bunch of people defaulted on
Speaker 1: their credit cards this year. I guess we'll just have
Speaker 1: a bad year. And I know in reality that's how
Speaker 1: it works, but I just find it disingenuous to be like, well,
Speaker 1: everybody suffers, you know, like people lose their jobs because
Speaker 1: of fraud. It's like there's a there's a point b
Speaker 1: in there that that has to be held accountable to
Speaker 1: some degree, well, which is your own freaking ethical code
Speaker 1: of conduct, and like about not doing that because it's
Speaker 1: the wrong thing to do. No, but I'm saying, like,
Speaker 1: there's an institution that's absorbing the hit and then turnerund
Speaker 1: firing this poor guy. Yeah, exactly. It's just it's tough
Speaker 1: because I came across a word when they were describing
Speaker 1: white collar crime giving a definition of it, and they said,
Speaker 1: victims coling diffuse. Yeah, you don't meet the person the
Speaker 1: the victim passes along the hit to other people. It's
Speaker 1: a big it's nebulous. And even if they're raising rates
Speaker 1: by like a quarter of a percentage point, or you're
Speaker 1: paying an extra two dollars as a consumer a year,
Speaker 1: it's like it's still not right. Yeah, you know, jo
Speaker 1: m hm. So where did this come from? Uh? Josh,
Speaker 1: it came. It sounds like it came from a cold,
Speaker 1: fool delivery boy. I want to know more about this.
Speaker 1: Was this dude just cold or did he really steal
Speaker 1: a lot of wool? Now, so you're talking about the carriers,
Speaker 1: the Carrier's Case of fourteen seventy three, it's the first
Speaker 1: um white collar trial, yes, um, and and it resulted
Speaker 1: in the first white collar law in fifteenth century England.
Speaker 1: And this wool transporter was given a bunch of wool
Speaker 1: and said, hey, take this wool to this person, and
Speaker 1: it was his job, so he decided to instead just
Speaker 1: keep the wool for himself for his own use. So
Speaker 1: he looked into this more. Yeah, I thought he might
Speaker 1: have been like cold on his journey and said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep some of this woold. Now, he kept
Speaker 1: some of the wool. I think he kept all of it,
Speaker 1: but somebody gave it to him. He's like, thanks chump,
Speaker 1: he was. But the key is, and this is something
Speaker 1: that has has woven into the history of white collar crime.
Speaker 1: What he did was not illegal at the time. The
Speaker 1: law that was enacted as a result of the Carrier's
Speaker 1: case was they were saying, Okay, this isn't oh, this
Speaker 1: isn't illegal, but it's obviously there's a huge problem with this,
Speaker 1: so we're going to create a law that outlaws this
Speaker 1: act so people can't do it anymore. Good point. And
Speaker 1: basically that's what happened. Well, that's kind of what happens
Speaker 1: with every law. I guess, someone commits it first and
Speaker 1: then someone says, hey, maybe we shouldn't do that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. But in this case, especially like uh, the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution in the West, obviously you started getting these
Speaker 1: larger corporations and all of a sudden, things like monopolies
Speaker 1: and price fixing and employee uh safety and all these
Speaker 1: things come into effect for the first time. So that's
Speaker 1: sort of when it was really born and when they
Speaker 1: started saying, hey, we need to look at something called antitrust. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: like monopolies were not illegal, but when a company bought
Speaker 1: up all of its competitors and said, oh, suddenly the
Speaker 1: price for your groceries like through the roof, where else
Speaker 1: you gonna go? It wasn't illegal, but the the people
Speaker 1: of the world started screaming, and governments finally responded, and
Speaker 1: it was really the US that first had the real
Speaker 1: first solid response in the Sherman Anti Trust Act in
Speaker 1: like the eighteen seventies maybe I think eighteen ninety named
Speaker 1: for John Senator John Sherman, Ohio, Republican dude, chairman of
Speaker 1: the Senate's Finance Senate Finance Committee, which I didn't know
Speaker 1: they even had way back then. I forgot didn't either,
Speaker 1: but I mean, it seems like a basic committee there,
Speaker 1: so this is interesting. And that it was voted on.
Speaker 1: It won by a vote of in the Senate fifty
Speaker 1: one to one, in the House by two forty two
Speaker 1: to zero. So there was one dude that didn't vote
Speaker 1: for it. And then I think twenty five years later
Speaker 1: when they came up with the Clayton Anti Trust Act
Speaker 1: to really put some punch into the Sherman Act. It
Speaker 1: was two seventy seven to seventy four and forty six
Speaker 1: to sixteen so in that twenty four years, it sounds
Speaker 1: like maybe things got slightly corrupt here and there. Well
Speaker 1: it wasn't that. It was that. Well, maybe it was,
Speaker 1: but there was also some real problems with the Sherman
Speaker 1: Act that was really vague. It basically said like now,
Speaker 1: from here forth, all um anti competitive corporate measures are illegal,
Speaker 1: and then it left it to the courts to decide
Speaker 1: what was what, and the courts weren't really in the
Speaker 1: mood to enforce it, so it went largely unenforced. Although
Speaker 1: American Tobacco Company and Standard Oil, like two of the
Speaker 1: biggest companies in the country, were dissolved under the Sherman Act,
Speaker 1: Standard Oil big time. Imagine that Like, imagine going to
Speaker 1: a company now and saying like, hey, Apple, it's just
Speaker 1: too big, so we're gonna dissolve you into thirty one companies.
Speaker 1: We have all these federal regulators here and they're gonna
Speaker 1: come in and look at everything and the dissolve you
Speaker 1: into different companies. Sorry, that's what they did. Okay, Even still,
Speaker 1: it didn't have enough tea. So they came up with
Speaker 1: the Clayton Anti Trust Act, and then that one really
Speaker 1: spelled things out, like, um, you couldn't do price discrimination anymore,
Speaker 1: which if you were black in America during the Jim
Speaker 1: Crow era, price discrimination was mind boggling. You walk into
Speaker 1: a store if you're allowed in there to begin with,
Speaker 1: and they'll just make up whatever price they want. It's
Speaker 1: it was really I'm reading this, um Consumerism an America book,
Speaker 1: and it's at this point now is really just this
Speaker 1: blemish on American history. I mean, like slavery wasn't bad enough.
Speaker 1: I mean to like have slavery light through the Jim
Speaker 1: Crow era, it's just disgusting. Um. Okay, So there was
Speaker 1: no price discrimination allegedly, corporate mergers were outlawed in the
Speaker 1: Clayton yeah. Um. And then interlocking boards where you had
Speaker 1: like competitive companies but the same people on the board
Speaker 1: of each Right, you can't have that. And then also
Speaker 1: exclusive contracts where it's like hey, Home Depot, you can
Speaker 1: sell our um weed whackers, but you can't tell anybody
Speaker 1: else's those contracts are out right, Hey Home. They do
Speaker 1: stuff like that now though, right, maybe not exclusively, but
Speaker 1: they carry lives. They do not limited number of brands,
Speaker 1: corporate mergers, interlocking boards, exclusive contracts, all that stuff one
Speaker 1: a way. They all got chipped away. Okay, it's just
Speaker 1: I mean this, this this act is like not in
Speaker 1: force anymore. Basically. Well, that's one things that bugs me
Speaker 1: about like grocery or actually the big box hardware stores.
Speaker 1: Grocery shopping, you you only have access to what they
Speaker 1: who they have partnered with, right, whether it's your potato
Speaker 1: chip that you want or your weed whacker that you want.
Speaker 1: It's true. And most of the big box stores also
Speaker 1: have exclusive contracts the other way. It's like, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: sell your weed whacker, but you can't sell it. No
Speaker 1: one else can, right, So it's like a real gamble,
Speaker 1: I understand, Like sign on to one of these giant corporations.
Speaker 1: Well that's one in the Walmart effect. That was one
Speaker 1: of the things I think they used to. It's like
Speaker 1: a tent company or an awning company, and like this
Speaker 1: mom and pop awning company all of a sudden gets
Speaker 1: a Walmart contract and they're like, sweet, they answered all
Speaker 1: our prayers. They ordered like thirty thousand of these. They
Speaker 1: order thirty thousand, They opened up like three new buildings.
Speaker 1: Hi are all these employees, and then the next year
Speaker 1: they come back and say, we want thirty thousand more
Speaker 1: but we're gonna pay you about less, and you've already
Speaker 1: bought the buildings and even you know, invested in the
Speaker 1: in the materials and the people, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're screwed. You know, one thing that I've long
Speaker 1: thought and I'm gonna totally take flak for this, but
Speaker 1: I still think it's worth saying, like you here, like, well,
Speaker 1: that's just business. I feel that any any institution where
Speaker 1: like morally reprehensible acts can just be you know, off
Speaker 1: handedly dismissed as a matter of course of that institution
Speaker 1: is inherently fought. There's an inherent problem with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not okay, Like we don't just go, well, that's
Speaker 1: just murder, you know, or well that's just stealing, you know,
Speaker 1: welcome to earth. Human. No, we have moral and legal
Speaker 1: guidelines that we follow. And is this in Corporations have
Speaker 1: so so long stood outside of these things that it's
Speaker 1: just it always bugs me when it's just like what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Yeah, I don't like that. So sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm off my soap I agree completely, Well, I'm off
Speaker 1: of my Tide brand soapbox. Well said, um so, things
Speaker 1: are kicking along here in the industrial West. Corporations are
Speaker 1: getting larger, and all of a sudden, these crimes start happening,
Speaker 1: and something called a muck raker in the nineteenth than
Speaker 1: early twentieth century comes about. And I didn't realize a
Speaker 1: muck raker was exclusively a journalist. Yeah, it's thought it
Speaker 1: was for an investigative journalist. I thought it would was
Speaker 1: anyone raking muck. Um, But it's specifically a journalist who
Speaker 1: basically early on said you know what, that's bad stuff
Speaker 1: going on, see and I'm gonna expose you right one.
Speaker 1: Oh really and he wrote the jungle changed of course.
Speaker 1: I mean the FDA basically came about because of the
Speaker 1: investigation that conducted. Well, muckrakers raked a lot of muck
Speaker 1: can cost a lot of problems in these companies. And um,
Speaker 1: one of the things that came about because of the
Speaker 1: muckraking were, you know, things like the Clayton Net that's
Speaker 1: exactly right, exposing all this stuff exactly and things like
Speaker 1: that DA, Federal regulations, consumer protections. The muckrakers basically stirred
Speaker 1: up public sentiment like hey, don't be idiots, like this
Speaker 1: stuff's going on, and a lot of people said, well,
Speaker 1: it's not illegal. And then unfortunately there are guys like
Speaker 1: um E. A. Ross, who was a criminologist and a sociologist,
Speaker 1: and he started really kind of looking into this and said,
Speaker 1: hey man, these people might not be criminal, but let's
Speaker 1: call them criminal OIDs. Like that was the coining the
Speaker 1: turn might coin for people who, especially in business, carried
Speaker 1: out these terrible acts that weren't illegal. He argued that
Speaker 1: even though it's not illegal, they're causing ill and these
Speaker 1: people are still responsible for him. So make a law
Speaker 1: that outlaws at dummies. And he inspired a guy named H. Sutherland.
Speaker 1: Okay he came before Sutherland. Yeah, he was at the UM.
Speaker 1: Ross was working at the time of the muckrakers, and
Speaker 1: then Sutherland came about twenty years later. Yeah. Sutherland coined
Speaker 1: the term actually white collar crime in nine and he
Speaker 1: was a criminologist and sociologist, and he pretty much he
Speaker 1: had a broader definition that basically it was the high
Speaker 1: society and not the lower class at all committing these crimes, right,
Speaker 1: which nowadays you can't really say that because anyone can
Speaker 1: get a stock tip commit in. You know, it happens
Speaker 1: all the time across all spectrums of the class system.
Speaker 1: But Sutherland's point was, and he wrote a book called
Speaker 1: White Collar Crime, UM. His point was that there was
Speaker 1: a huge bias in the United States UM where the
Speaker 1: where law enforcement in the courts leaned heavily on UM,
Speaker 1: the working class crime, and just basically ignored the crimes
Speaker 1: of the upper class and said this is not okay, Like, um,
Speaker 1: if a guy is gonna steal a thousand dollars from
Speaker 1: a cash register with no gun or anything like that,
Speaker 1: like there are other factors, but let's just say a
Speaker 1: guy steals a thousand dollars from a cash register and
Speaker 1: he's poor, and a guy steals a thousand dollars from
Speaker 1: an investor and he's rich. That's they should be treated equally,
Speaker 1: and they're not. And that's what Sutherland's point was. And
Speaker 1: he was the first dude to really bring this to light,
Speaker 1: wasn't he. Yeah, well, Ross kind of started to, but
Speaker 1: Sutherland was very well received. It was well received in
Speaker 1: certain corners. But there were also certain flaws pointed out
Speaker 1: by people over the years. UM. One of the things
Speaker 1: mentioned the article has said that he failed to distinguish
Speaker 1: illegal crime from deviant mere deviant behavior, right, like apparently
Speaker 1: his his whole premise was like you're into donkeys, you're
Speaker 1: a white collar criminal exactly. And the other thing I
Speaker 1: mentioned too was that he pretty much said it was
Speaker 1: anyone like any upper class nonviolent crime, right, And that's
Speaker 1: definitely evolved, and I think fairly sure. I think you
Speaker 1: can be working class, you can be buss his class
Speaker 1: if you like. That's a big, big part of white
Speaker 1: color crimes definition is that your opportunity arises because of
Speaker 1: the trust that's granted to you through your occupation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even if you're a lower level employee, you still may
Speaker 1: have access. Like the lady who wanted to sell the
Speaker 1: coke secret. She wasn't like a CEO, No, she was
Speaker 1: an admin. I believe in things like job job m um.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's one thing that that like you said,
Speaker 1: they like to shoot a hole in uh Sutherland's theory.
Speaker 1: That or they say his definition is too broad because
Speaker 1: he did include behavior that's not illegal. But it's a
Speaker 1: very legitimate point to say, you kind of have to
Speaker 1: because if not, then we wouldn't have had the Sherman
Speaker 1: Anti Trust Act, we wouldn't have had the Clayton Act,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have had um you know, the f d A,
Speaker 1: all of these things that uh that the carrier's case,
Speaker 1: he would have gotten off scott free. What he did
Speaker 1: was not illegal. So it has to evolve over time. Agreed, Okay,
Speaker 1: and it has agreed. So let's talk about, um, I
Speaker 1: guess the impacts of today's modern white color crime. I
Speaker 1: was like man that was suspensable all of a sudden. Thanks. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've talked about a few of these, about seemingly not
Speaker 1: having a victim. But what happens is, um, you rip
Speaker 1: off a huge corporation, the al race of prices. There's
Speaker 1: another ripple effect. You talked about cutting jobs to meet
Speaker 1: you know, the needs of the investors. If it's a
Speaker 1: publicly traded company. Um, when there's stock fraud committed, insider
Speaker 1: scandals like Enron are going to ripple out throughout the
Speaker 1: stock market cause it is, like you know, basically cause
Speaker 1: people to be unsure and have no faith in the
Speaker 1: stock market all of a sudden. Yeah that's dangerous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think about all the people who just lost everything.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I get yeah. I get just as angry,
Speaker 1: if not more angry at something like that than you know,
Speaker 1: something like heinous crime. Yeah, i'd say equal, Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: both scumbags. Okay. Um, so you said, like in seventy
Speaker 1: four the FBI first started, they that's when they've created
Speaker 1: this white color Crime division. So apparently like yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was a response like this University of Michigan
Speaker 1: survey that they conducted between nineteen fifty eight, I think
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, they found that, um, people who
Speaker 1: said that they trust the federal government went from seventy
Speaker 1: three to thirty seven percent between nineteen fifty eight and
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. Yeah, I flip flopped. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: sort of could see that over that time period the sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the big ones was just like fraud and
Speaker 1: corruption at high levels, and so the FBI created this
Speaker 1: white collar crime thing. One of the other things that
Speaker 1: differentiates white collar crime from regular working class crime is
Speaker 1: the police's ability to police it. You walk into a
Speaker 1: room and there's some guy weighing out cocaine, he's a criminal.
Speaker 1: You walk into a room and there's some guy on
Speaker 1: a computer doing a pump and dump scheme. Who knows
Speaker 1: that average cop isn't equipped to detect this kind of crime,
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, even very very well
Speaker 1: trained cops aren't typically equipped to detect this kind of crime.
Speaker 1: One of the hallmarks of white collar crime is that
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to prove. It's very difficult to uncover,
Speaker 1: and it's also difficult to prosecute. Yeah, and there's no uh,
Speaker 1: smoking gun, there's no paper trail, or there may be
Speaker 1: a paper trail, but it's probably electronified. Sure, so it's
Speaker 1: a little harder to follow. You gotta really, you know,
Speaker 1: you gotta have people that know what they're doing. And
Speaker 1: that's why the FBI created that division, and I guess
Speaker 1: they're doing a good job, but it's kind of hard. Well,
Speaker 1: the Justice Department has been going after white collar crime
Speaker 1: lately under Obama pretty hard here there, um, and then
Speaker 1: the Sarbanes Oxley Act definitely step things up and to
Speaker 1: some say too much. Yeah, I mean, I've had to
Speaker 1: comply with this at various uh when I worked in
Speaker 1: the film as Is production companies had to, like it,
Speaker 1: jump through way more hoops with paperwork because the Sarbanes
Speaker 1: Oxley do you want to tell do you want to
Speaker 1: tell them? Well, it's it was in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: and it was to improve corporate governance, which is basically
Speaker 1: accountability between corporation the stakeholders. What it amounted to was
Speaker 1: a lot more paperwork, essentially, a lot more proving of
Speaker 1: numbers and showing numbers and jumping through hoops. It was
Speaker 1: a direct reaction from of the fallout of Enron, from
Speaker 1: the fallout of Enron and Tycho and like all the
Speaker 1: other companies around that time. UM. But one of the
Speaker 1: other things that did chuckers was UM quadrupled sentences in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases for white collar crime. So now
Speaker 1: you have guys like Bernie made Off getting a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years. There's a guy named Sholem Weiss who
Speaker 1: was involved in like the breakup of some insurance company.
Speaker 1: He got eight hundred and forty five years. He gets
Speaker 1: out in twenty seven fifty four. I don't think he's
Speaker 1: going to see that. I don't either, But I mean
Speaker 1: a guy named rich Harkness got a hundred years for
Speaker 1: a thirty nine million dollar ponzi scheme like these, and
Speaker 1: all of this is like post Sarbanes Oxley, except Sholem Weiss,
Speaker 1: which is really saying something. But but I mean, like,
Speaker 1: so now now sentences are like quadruple. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, maybe maybe this is a little too
Speaker 1: much like just retribution on the rich. It is, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of I think why a lot of people
Speaker 1: are having a hard time feeling bad for ridiculously wealthy
Speaker 1: people who were hucksters and frauds, or people who builked
Speaker 1: people out of their retirement accounts. It's tough to feel
Speaker 1: sorry for him. But legally speaking, it's like, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, Um, you were worried about the guy who
Speaker 1: stole a thousand dollars out of it till being treated
Speaker 1: differently from the guy who stole a thousand dollars from
Speaker 1: an investor. Now it's flip flopped. How is that any better? Exactly.
Speaker 1: One of the arguments for these kind of things is
Speaker 1: that these people are traditionally and historically have been treated
Speaker 1: differently because they look like the judges that are sentencing them,
Speaker 1: and so judges historically like really have taken it easy
Speaker 1: on them. Um, let's go ahead and just call them
Speaker 1: white dudes. Okay, but they also have been Um you
Speaker 1: can make the case that they are usually first time offenders,
Speaker 1: they're usually family people. Um. That's that's something that the
Speaker 1: judges put out there like, well, this is a family man,
Speaker 1: he's not much of a flight risk. He's probably never
Speaker 1: going to do this again, as he had dangered a society. Yes,
Speaker 1: he didn't use a weapon, which is a huge, huge differentiation,
Speaker 1: and so sentences have typically typically been light. But um,
Speaker 1: you can you can also kind of say, well, you
Speaker 1: know where where it feels like we haven't quite felt
Speaker 1: it out, like we've traditionally ignored white collar crime. Now
Speaker 1: we're really sticking it to him. Well, it's that whole
Speaker 1: argument with prison. Is it like punishment for a crime done?
Speaker 1: Or is it rehabilitating a person who has a problem
Speaker 1: with crime? Well, within eight hundred and forty five years sentence,
Speaker 1: it's making an example out of that person because since
Speaker 1: you can't police it, another way to prevent it is
Speaker 1: to send a message through the courts like you do
Speaker 1: this man, you're going to prison for a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's such a deterrent though for
Speaker 1: some of these people. I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think about it. Twenty years in a in a federal pen.
Speaker 1: You say, club fed is not around any longer? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And I mean this is like twenty actual years. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: some guy named Thomas Petters recently got fifty years and
Speaker 1: he will spend forty years in jail and he's fifty
Speaker 1: two and he will probably die in prison. Now that's
Speaker 1: a big deal with somebody who's like, well, maybe I
Speaker 1: shouldn't do this insider train, Maybe I should let this
Speaker 1: fifty grand just walk by because it's not really worth it.
Speaker 1: Well something like that. I'm talking about the ones who
Speaker 1: are getting rich by the tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: What I want to see is that these people don't
Speaker 1: get out of prison and still have all those millions
Speaker 1: of dollars like hidden in different foreign accounts and offshore
Speaker 1: islands and uh like, the financial part is what really
Speaker 1: bugs me. I meant to I didn't get a chance
Speaker 1: that I meant to look up and see if any
Speaker 1: of the en Ron victims and employees were ever repaid
Speaker 1: or if they were just s O L. I'm under
Speaker 1: the distinct impression they were s O L really, because
Speaker 1: the company was in such bad shape that even dissolving
Speaker 1: it and I think I think they some people did
Speaker 1: get some money, but I don't think it was anything
Speaker 1: approaching what they lost. Well, if whoever commits these crimes
Speaker 1: gets out of jail and they have two pennies to
Speaker 1: rub together. Then those two pennies more than they should have.
Speaker 1: I think, well, that's the thing. Like, so the government
Speaker 1: started prosecuting under the Rico Act, which is the same
Speaker 1: thing they bust up mafia organizations with UM and they've
Speaker 1: been fighting white collar crime with that. And one of
Speaker 1: the things about the Rico Acts it allows states and
Speaker 1: individuals who are harmed to sue for up to three
Speaker 1: times the damages. Yeah, but even then, all they have
Speaker 1: to do is say, yeah, I don't have that money.
Speaker 1: You kid me. Well, it's true, I can't pay it. No,
Speaker 1: it's true. But like UM, in the made off case,
Speaker 1: the guy who's who was assigned to basically get money
Speaker 1: back for investors has gotten I don't remember how much
Speaker 1: made off least, but let's say it was eight billion.
Speaker 1: The guys managed to like get like six billion back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's done a really good job of getting the money back.
Speaker 1: And that's just a that's that's an example. It's not
Speaker 1: a figure, but it's it's something pretty significant. You're still
Speaker 1: gonna get email. I'm looking forward to the ones where
Speaker 1: it's like Hey man, we don't listen to you for
Speaker 1: free to hear your opinion about class. All right, let's
Speaker 1: move on to other countries. Um, things are different all
Speaker 1: over the world. UM. Obviously when it comes to big
Speaker 1: business and business dealons. Uh. Western Europe has followed right
Speaker 1: behind the US, UH most wholeheartedly with laws to prevent corruption.
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe it's coming on board a little slower, um.
Speaker 1: But then you go into other countries like in Western Africa,
Speaker 1: and it may be customary to Greece palms to get
Speaker 1: a deal going, or in India where apparently if you're
Speaker 1: a truck driver, you're gonna have to bribe people to
Speaker 1: keep your rig on the road. And that's just how
Speaker 1: it is there, right, And not only is it customary,
Speaker 1: it's frequently legal. Yeah. Russia, Yeah, bribes all over the A.
Speaker 1: So you want to land contract, you might have to
Speaker 1: bribe somebody. So if you're a multinational corporation, it's tough
Speaker 1: to do that's headquartered in America. Yeah, you have like
Speaker 1: a real problem facing you, especially, like I said, the
Speaker 1: UM Justice Department under Obama has been prosecuting white color
Speaker 1: crimes and going big time after UM people. Under the
Speaker 1: Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which says, if you're an American company,
Speaker 1: you can't engage in bribes, even if it's legal in
Speaker 1: that country. Yeah, but what's the point, like, why hamstring
Speaker 1: American business abroad? Exactly? Um? And to help this out, actually,
Speaker 1: there has been a unified committee called the UM company
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, committee called Transparency International, and they are out
Speaker 1: to get rid of corruption and to unify business business
Speaker 1: ethics all over the world. Right, And that's the that's
Speaker 1: the reason that you hamstring American business because it's basically saying, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: we can take the hit in the hopes of pressing
Speaker 1: the rest of the world into the same clean up
Speaker 1: their act. Competitive laws we have here in the States
Speaker 1: that work very well, So good luck to them. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's it, man, I got nothing else. No, we should
Speaker 1: we should play this one out with um tucking heads
Speaker 1: big business agreed, Okay, Um, so chuck, let's see. Uh.
Speaker 1: If people want to learn more about white collar crime,
Speaker 1: I would strongly advise them to go read this article
Speaker 1: by Jaye McGrath. People with John and there's a Simpsons
Speaker 1: reference in it. It's a way to go Jane. UM.
Speaker 1: You can type in white collar crime in the search
Speaker 1: bar how stuff works dot com? Which friend oh brings
Speaker 1: up listener mail. That's right, Josh, I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: uh hot off the press is good cause I'm gonna
Speaker 1: sucker with that stuff. Okay, Chuck and Josh and Jerry.
Speaker 1: I want to say thank you for all the hours
Speaker 1: of listening. My brother Chase and I've been listeners nearly
Speaker 1: as long because you have been making them. There was
Speaker 1: even one year's day where all we would do was
Speaker 1: listen to your Hangover podcast on repeat. I don't he's
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's good for hangover. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: funny and informative, and I always feel like calling my
Speaker 1: brother after listening to the latest episode. I'm writing you
Speaker 1: because it's recently his birthday. He's the best brother in
Speaker 1: the world and downright awesome human being. It would mean
Speaker 1: a lot to me if you could tell the stuff
Speaker 1: you should know listeners about his latest project. When his
Speaker 1: friend Jim survived cancer, he told Chase that he gained
Speaker 1: strength in the music he loved over two years, two
Speaker 1: hundred twenty six hundred tracks, two hundred tracks. It's a
Speaker 1: weird way to put it. What would that bed? Would
Speaker 1: that be wait how many two D yeah would it?
Speaker 1: Or D no plus two hundred d Nearly two hundred
Speaker 1: artists persons insane, No, she's not over two years two
Speaker 1: hundred tracks nearly two hundred artists from other countries all
Speaker 1: over the world have allowed them to share that message.
Speaker 1: They are releasing their second compilation disc Electronic Saviors colon
Speaker 1: Industrial Music to Cure cancer. So it's these artists compilations
Speaker 1: are putting together apparently two tracks. Uh. They are a
Speaker 1: registered US charity and all proceeds go to cancer research.
Speaker 1: And if you want if you're into electronic music and
Speaker 1: if you want to support cancer research, you can go
Speaker 1: to www dot Electronic Saviors dot com. And that is
Speaker 1: something Chase has got going and his sister Laura Dudley
Speaker 1: uh is a big fan of her bro He sounds
Speaker 1: like a swell guy. I'm all for it. Cancer. Had
Speaker 1: to promoted your cause, chuckers. We try to do that.
Speaker 1: You did good. Um. Yeah, we always want to hear
Speaker 1: about good causes, so you can get in touch with us,
Speaker 1: let us know about yours. We'll try our best to
Speaker 1: let everybody else know about it, especially if people can
Speaker 1: support it. Agreed. Um, let's see also enjoy a little
Speaker 1: Talking Heads Big Business from the live album Stop Making
Speaker 1: Sense released. We're sure it's up on iTunes, Amazon and elsewhere. Um.
Speaker 1: You can get in touch with us at s y
Speaker 1: s K podcast on Twitter, uh, you can go to
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, and you
Speaker 1: can send us a regular old email to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com and as always, join
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